Cartel

by Chuck Hustmyre

  "That's not what we're doing."

  "Maybe not," he said, "but that's exactly what it will look like to the Justice Department if we get caught coming out of this tunnel."

  A light flashed past and Scott saw fear on Benny's face. "It's not the American government I'm worried about right now," she said. "It's the people at the other end of this tun-nel."

  "I'll go up first," he said.

  She nodded. Then the cart plunged into another stretch of blackness. From that darkness, Benny said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

  "About the tunnel?"

  "And about me."

  "What about you?"

  "I know about this tunnel because it belongs to Los Zetas," she said. "And so do I." They were approaching an-other light and Scott saw Benny's face materialize out of the darkness. "That's why the guard let me in," she said.

  "But you killed two of them."

  "I have to get out," she said, her voice breaking. "I have to get my daughter out of Mexico."

  Scott felt the rail cart slow as the track began to slope upward. "Why did you do it?"

  "Take their money?"

  He nodded. Then he realized they were between lights again and she couldn't see him. "Yes," he said. "Why did you take their money?"

  "Weren't you listening?" Benny said. "They don't give you a choice. Plata o plomo, remember? Right now Los Zetas control the Nuevo Laredo plaza. I work in Nuevo La-redo. I live in Nuevo Laredo. And so does my daughter."

  "Did Cassidy know?"

  "No," she said. "And I never wanted him to find out." Scott heard a sob catch in her throat as she said, "It would have broken his heart."

  "How were you planning to get out?"

  "I don't know."

  As the cart trudged up the steepening grade of the track, they passed another work light. Now it was getting warmer in the tunnel.

  "So you knew all along it wasn't Los Zetas who killed your boyfriend," Scott said. "Even before you saw the pic-ture of Estrada."

  She was crying and didn't answer. Just a slight nod.

  "And you were protecting them," he said. "Protecting Los Zetas." It was another statement, not a question.

  "I told you about the video," she said, her voice crack-ing under the tears. "I let you search my house."

  "Why?" Scott asked.

  "So you could catch the people who murdered Mi-chael." She looked like she wanted to say more, but there was a light up ahead, different than the work lights they had been passing. They were getting close to the end of the tun-nel.

  "We need to get ready," Scott said.

  Benny wiped her face and nodded.

  "How many do you think are up there?"

  She shook her head, then turned away from him and pulled back the control lever. The cart slowed. The light at the end of the tunnel was getting brighter. It reminded Scott of the stories people told about near-death experiences, trav-eling down a long dark tunnel toward a bright light. He wondered if the stories were true and if the ones who didn't come back saw the same thing. Did it look like what he was seeing right now?

  Scott thought about the man who had escaped from the warehouse at the other end. He hadn't seen them go into the tunnel, at least Scott didn't think he had, and he probably thought they had come to rob the warehouse, not take the tunnel across to the United States; but if he had seen them, or if he had sneaked back in and discovered that the rail cart was gone, then his first call would have been to the ware-house across the river. Which meant that somebody-or several somebodies-could be waiting for them.

  Chapter 50

  Scott scrambled around the stacked kilos of cocaine and crouched beside Benny. The cart was fifty yards from the end of the tunnel. The light was much brighter now, and he could also hear the drone of a motor, probably a generator. "Stop the cart," he said. "We'll walk the rest of the way."

  Benny pulled the control lever back to neutral and the cart coasted to a stop twenty yards from the end of the tun-nel. Scott jumped down onto the hard-packed floor and raised the AK-47 to his shoulder. Benny hopped down be-side him and pulled her own AK-47 up into firing position.

  Benny took a step forward. Scott reached out and stopped her. She turned toward him, but he didn't explain, just pressed a finger to his lips, warning her to be quiet, even though he doubted they could be heard above the rapid-fire piston sound of the generator above them. Then he reached up and shoved the cart's control lever all the way forward.

  The cart clattered ahead, accelerating as it gobbled up the last twenty yards of track. Then it banged into the far side of the hole. The impact bucked the cart a couple of inches off the rails and toppled a few kilos from the stack before the cart settled back down onto the track.

  Multiple machine guns opened fire from the top of the hole. Bullets ripped through the stacked kilos and bounced off the steel cart, some ricocheting down the tunnel. Cocaine dust exploded into the air. Scott shoved Benny to the ground and covered her.

  Then the shooting stopped.

  And in the silence that followed, Scott heard the famil-iar sound of empty magazines being ripped from rifles. One of the shooters dropped a magazine, and Scott heard the hol-low clank as it struck what sounded like the concrete lip of the hole. Then he saw the magazine fall past the mouth of the tunnel and bang onto the packed dirt and rock floor.

  "Follow me," he said. Then he charged out of the tunnel and into the open hole, eyes and rifle muzzle tracking up-ward. An instant later, Benny was raising her rifle beside him. Four men stood around the rim of the hole peering down at them, one on each side of the square that had been cut through the concrete floor. All four men were jamming fresh magazines into M-16s.

  Scott fired a short burst into one man, then shifted his aim to a second. Before he could fire again, Benny cut loose with a burst and the man Scott had been about to shoot tum-bled forward into the hole and landed with a bone-cracking thud on top of the steel cart. Scott shifted to the third man and fired again just as Benny fired at the fourth. Scott put two bullets into his target's chest. Then with the natural rise of the muzzle he put a third and fourth bullet into his face. The man crumpled backward and left one leg dangling over the edge of the hole.

  For several seconds, Scott and Benny scanned for addi-tional threats. None presented themselves. Just as at the oth-er end of the tunnel, an aluminum extension ladder leaned against the side of the hole. "Cover me," Scott said, slinging the rifle across his back and drawing the Glock from his waistband. He started up the ladder. The climbing was awk-ward because he had to do it with one hand while he aimed the Glock with his other hand.

  At the top of the hole he peaked over the edge. No one was there. He pivoted left and right. Still no one. Climbing out of the hole, he moved into a crouched shooting position and scanned 360 degrees. The warehouse was nearly identi-cal to the one across the river, filled with the same machinery and the same pallets stacked high with cocaine. The only difference Scott could see was that in this warehouse, there were also pallets loaded with shrink-wrapped blocks of cash.

  But other than the four dead men, there was no one else in the warehouse. The generator droned on. Scott could see it now and realized it wasn't connected to anything. It was just running and making noise, the sound much louder up here as it reverberated off the metal walls. The cartel men had probably cranked it up to cover the sound of their gun-fire.

  "Clear," Scott shouted and waved Benny up.

  She scrambled up the ladder and stood beside him. "How did you know they were waiting for us?"

  "I didn't," he said. "But I thought there was a good chance that the guy who got away from us on the other side of the river might warn the people on this side, and that as soon as we stuck our heads out of that tunnel it would be like shooting fish in a barrel."

  "Shooting fish how?"

  "In a barrel," he said. "Never mind. We'd be easy tar-gets."

  "You saved my life."

  "You saved mine last night," he said. "So we're even.
"

  Scott and Benny crept through the warehouse, rifles ready, just in case there was someone else waiting for them. As they threaded their way through the rows of pallets stacked high with cocaine and cash, Scott couldn't help but be astounded. For a DEA agent it was a wet dream come true. The bust of a lifetime. Yet as the local DEA supervisor, he had had no idea there was an active cross-border tunnel in Laredo. He and his group hadn't picked up any chatter about it at all. Which made him wonder what else he didn't know.

  And now that he knew, now that he was surrounded by dope and money, he had to leave it all behind. There wasn't time to call it in and wait. He had to get the video to Glenn Peterson. The best he could do was tell Peterson about the warehouse when they met. Maybe the ASAC could put to-gether a team and hit this place this afternoon, before Los Zetas had a chance to move everything back across the bor-der.

  He heard a metallic click behind him. Turning, he saw Benny had flicked open a folding knife and was slicing off the shrink-wrap from a stack of money the size of a concrete block. "What are you doing?" he said.

  She closed the knife and picked up a banded brick of cash. "We need money for a cab," she said as she strolled past him. "Let's get out of here before somebody grows a pair of balls big enough to come check out all the noise."

  At the door they unloaded their rifles and tossed them away. They kept the pistols. Scott tucked the Glock into the back of his waistband and covered it with his shirt. He touched the flash drive hanging around his neck. Then he checked his watch. It was 12:20 p.m. In less than half an hour he was going to dump this whole pile of shit into Glenn Peterson's lap and let him deal with it. That's why ASACs got paid the big bucks.

  Chapter 51

  Humberto Larios was in a bad mood. His mood was the re-sult of anxiety. A feeling he was not used to. Sitting in an overstuffed leather recliner in one of his villa's five dens, Larios was staring at his giant TV screen and flipping chan-nels. Sports, history, cooking, gardening, movies-they all looked the same to him. He glanced at the encrypted cell phone lying on the end table at his elbow. The time display was visible, so he knew that the telephone's battery had not run down. Maybe he should call somebody just to make sure the phone was getting a signal. But he knew the signal was fine. The signal wasn't the problem. The problem was that the person whose call he was waiting for hadn't called.

  So he kept switching the channels on his television.

  Then he saw her face flash across the screen as he thumbed past a news channel. He flipped back and there she was. Benetta Alvarez. On TV. A newscaster was talking, but the volume was too low for Larios to hear. He jabbed the button that turned up the sound.

  According to the newscaster, an American Drug En-forcement agent who had recently gone missing was be-lieved to be in the company of a Policia Federal officer named Benetta Alvarez, who, according to a policia spokesman, was also missing. Another photo appeared on the television screen, side by side with Alvarez. The photo, again according the newscaster, was of the American agent, Scott Greene, who was under internal investigation by the DEA. The extent of the relationship between Alvarez and Greene was not clear, but authorities in both countries sus-pected the two fugitive law enforcement officers were to-gether somewhere near the border.

  Larios picked up his phone and dialed a number.

  Five minutes later, Miguel Sanchez, a thick-necked, bar-rel-chested man in his forties, stood in front of Larios, more or less at military attention. Sanchez's brush cut left his mangled left ear exposed. The missing part of the ear had ei-ther been shot off, cut off, or bitten off. Larios had never gotten the full story. A jagged scar ran under Sanchez's left eye and across his cheek.

  Larios's right-hand man and an original Zeta, Sanchez had been a second sergeant in the Army's Special Forces Airmobile Group and had deserted with Arturo Guzman De-cena, the man famously known by his radio call sign, "Z-1."

  It was Guzman who, with promises of wealth and pow-er, had convinced an initial cadre of thirty Airmobile Group soldiers, including Sanchez, to desert from the Army and form a paramilitary unit of mercenaries to work for the Gulf Cartel. That unit had become known as Los Zetas, the plural of the Spanish word for the letter Z, in honor of its leader, Arturo Guzman.

  Los Zetas eventually split from the Gulf Cartel and formed an independent group. Now they were the second largest and second most powerful cartel in Mexico and had surpassed all of the others in violence and sheer terror. And they were at war with the Sinaloa cartel.

  "Find Benetta Alvarez," Larios told Sanchez.

  "La policia?" the ex-soldier asked.

  Larios nodded. "She has a video with her. On a flash drive. I need the video and any copies. She is probably with an American DEA agent."

  "What about after I get the video?"

  "I won't need her anymore," Larios said. "Or the Ameri-can." He paused for a few seconds, then added, "Send a message."

  Sanchez didn't salute anymore. He'd finally broken him-self of that habit. He just said, "Sí, señor." Then he did an about-face and marched out.

  Chapter 52

  The taxi dropped them off at the Radisson Hotel. Benny handed the driver a hundred dollar bill.

  "I don't have enough change," the driver complained.

  "Keep it," Benny said.

  Scott climbed out of the cab. Benny followed him. As the taxi pulled away, Scott said, "You gave him a seventy dollar tip."

  She patted the bulge of hundreds in her front pocket. "I have nine thousand and nine hundred more."

  Scott looked up at the glass façade of the high-rise ho-tel. He was almost done. The video would be out of his hands in a few minutes. Then what? What about his career? Did he even have a career? Four agents had been murdered on his watch. Three of them because of decisions he had made. Their surviving family members would need help, with insurance benefits, with counseling services, with funeral arrangements. Then there was Benny and her daughter. He had promised to get them out of Mexico, for good. He was going to keep that promise.

  "What are you looking at?" Benny asked.

  He glanced at her and smiled. "My life going up in smoke."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Nothing."

  They walked in through the revolving door, crossed the grand lobby, and got into an empty elevator car. Scott punched the button for the seventh floor. As the elevator doors closed, Benny asked, "What's he going to do with it?"

  "The video?"

  She nodded.

  "Get it to somebody important."

  "Who?" Benny asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Do you trust him?"

  "We went through a lot of doors together," Scott said. "So, yeah, I trust him."

  In the mirrored surface of the elevator door, Scott saw Benny nod. Then she said, "But how do you know you can trust the person he gives the video to? How do you know that person won't..." She snapped her fingers trying to recall a word. "Put it in the ground."

  "Bury it," Scott said.

  "Yes, bury it."

  "I don't. Not for sure. Because I don't know how high up this thing goes. They still may put me in front of a firing squad." Her shocked expression showed that she took his words literally. "I'm exaggerating," he said. "What I mean is-"

  The bell dinged and the door opened on the seventh floor. They stepped into the elevator lobby. To their left ran the central hallway. A brass sign on the wall indicated the range of room numbers in each direction. The elevator door closed behind them.

  "What I mean is that this is a big deal," Scott said. "A huge deal. Like Watergate. The CIA isn't the government. It's just a small part of the government. They're supposed to advise the president, not set policy for the United States. And they don't get to break the law to pursue their own agenda."

  "Didn't you do the same thing?"

  "By going after Ortiz in Mexico?"

  Benny nodded.

  Scott hesitated. "That was different."

  "How?"

/>   "I was trying to put a murderer in prison." Scott pulled the flash drive from under his shirt. "This is a CIA official and the deputy attorney general of Mexico having drinks with the biggest drug trafficker in Mexico and promising to protect his dope shipments to the United States."

  "Won't the CIA come after you?"

  He shook his head. "It's not the whole agency. It can't be. And once this goes public, the people who are involved won't have time to come after you or me. This video is going to kick off a category five shit storm, and they'll be too busy running for cover to worry about us."

  She looked skeptical.

  "Trust me," he said. "It might be rough at first, but in the end everything is going to be all right."

  "What about my daughter?"

  "Once I put this flash drive in Glenn's hands, you and I will be out of it, at least for a while, and we can figure out the best way to bring your daughter across the border and get you two back together."

  Benny smiled a little at that.

  "So let's get this over with," Scott said. Then he led the way down the hall to room 718.

  They found the door to Glenn's room ajar, held open by the security latch. They could hear the television playing and the shower running.

  "Maybe he's in the shower," Scott said as he slipped the Glock out from the small of his back. "And left the door open for us."

  "Then why are you pulling a gun?" Benny said as her own pistol appeared in her hand.

  Scott knocked on the door. "In case he's not in the shower."

  No one answered the knock.

  Nudging the door open a few more inches, Scott called out, "Glenn?"

  Nothing except the TV and the running water.

  Scott pushed the door open the rest of the way, until it bumped against the wall. He knew better than to leave enough room behind a door for someone to hide behind. He stepped into the room. Benny followed him.